Leroy and the Chinese Food

It started out as a simple task: find a Chinese place for dinner. Should be easy enough. Unfortunately, though, nothing in my world is EVER simple.

At this point, since I've only been in NOLA for a little over three weeks, I haven't quite yet familiarized myself with every spot in town. Those parts of town that I DO know, I restrict myself to-particularly after the sun goes down. Since I left the computer in Atlanta with Ronnie after I moved, I'm forced to use the phone book to find places of interest. After looking for 5 minutes, I found one.... UNO Chinese places in the Uptown/Garden District phone book. Who thinks a major metropolitan area is only going to have a singular standing Chinese restaurant? Even living out in the middle of nowhere (a/k/a Commerce, GA), we had at least two Chinese restaurants, but I digress.

Cross checking with a map yields the location of said Uptown Chinese joint. A 10 minute drive later, I'm standing in the lobby of the China Orchid. I order a nice dinner of pot-stickers and Kung Pao Chicken and wait quietly for my food to arrive. While I'm sitting in the quaintly decorated lobby, fully equipped with dim lighting and tranquil music, I realize that what I really pine for is Chinese food from the place around the corner from my friend Jennifer's house. No other Chinese food on the face of the planet will ever compare with the cuisine at the restaurant near Jenny's. Be that as it may, beggars can't be choosers, and so at the China Orchid is where I waited.

Being conscientious to have my cell phone on me at all times, I make sure to clip it to the outside of my purse as I rise to pay the young cashier for my order. After arriving home and pulling a load of laundry from the community, coin-operated laundry down the hall, I prepare myself to sit down and dig into the delicious Kung Pao chicken that has been taunting me the whole way home from the restaurant. It is then that I realize my cell phone is no longer in my possession. After 15 minutes of frantically searching the house, the car, the street, and the laundry, I venture back to the Orchid and inquire if they've seen my phone. They respond in the negative, and without any luck, I irritatedly return to the apartment. I begrudgingly eat a small amount of the chicken and 2 pot-stickers then retire the food to the refrigerator, infuriated that I stupidly left to go get food in the first place. 2 hours pass, and I decide to finally go to bed.

At 8AM, Levi and Dallas woke me up, demanding to be fed. While in the kitchen preparing to feed the beasts, half-dressed, hair all askew, there is an incredibly loud banging sound at my door. The knock startled me, but scared the hell outta the cats, and they took off for shelter. I snatched my robe from the bathroom, amidst more banging, and quickly run to the door and slide it open. Standing before me is my Indian neighbor from downstairs (the one who talked of eating his cat before I'd even moved into the house), Bob. He hands me a sticky note and says that my mother has been frantically trying to reach me. Apparently some man named Leroy had located my cell phone and left it at a nearby pizza place. Before dropping off the phone, though, Leroy made sure to call my mother, my Aunt Amy, and Jennifer, all in an attempt to find someone who could get a hold of me. I don't have a land line, so after speaking with Leroy, mom was forced to Google my address to try and find some of my neighbors (who, thus far, aside from Bob, have proved to be rather standoffish).

I never did speak directly to Leroy, and I don't recall the name of the place where he told mom he worked. Should I ever cross paths with Leroy in the future, though, he shall be met with a firm handshake and hearty thanks for saving my cell phone from a worse fate and coming to the aide of completely irresponsible me.